Sunday, April 02, 2006

US Forces attack Mosque- wait, no thats all lies

On 27th March 2006, I blogged about a completely biased BBC online news story that seemed even from first reading to not coincide with the rest of what I'm hearing from Iraq, and also to coincide with the facts as related by the US official authorities. Now of course, the BBC is entitled to not believe what the US official authorities say without checking the facts independently if they can, but if you read that article you will come to the conclusion that nobody at the BBC tried to do that.

Subsequently, this http://www.mnf-iraq.com/Daily/Mar/060331.htm article on the official site of the international force in Iraq has some very interesting FACTs in it, presumable verifiable by the BBC if they care. Which they don't.

"The Iraqi Special Forces commander who led a weekend raid on a kidnapping cell in Baghdad spoke with Time magazine March 29. Local media [and Al-Arabiyah in Dubai] had made an assertion earlier in the week identifying the location of the operation as a mosque. However, according to Iraqi and U.S. official reports, the targeted complex was six blocks away from the closest mosque, the Mustafa Mosque. “The target was a Baghdad office complex used by an armed militia and not a mosque,” the unidentified commander said."

"A hostage freed in the operation confirmed the U.S. and Iraqi Special Operations Forces account, contradicting claims that U.S. and Iraqi troops targeted a Shiite mosque and killed unarmed worshipers."

"U.S. military officials have insisted no mosque was entered nor damaged in the raid, and that those describing the raid as a massacre faked evidence by moving bodies of gunmen killed fighting the Iraqi troops."

The BBC gave credence to the original accusations by reporting verbatim from Al-Arabiyah, and by not reporting the accusations as possible propaganda and by giving no context within the story about Al-Sadr and Mahdi armies previous form. Do you expect them to do another story now, and reveal the quite startling effort that went into making this propaganda story fly? That in fact, rather a lot of gory corpse-play went on and a prayer room in an office complex was touted as a mosque?

No, that really is expecting too much. The BBC is no longer a voice of British people, reporting in the interests of the British nation. It is a platform for our enemies to launch their shabby propaganda.